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In Defense of Tareq and Michaele Salahi

Now that the White House security has been breached by a pair of mere tourists, I can delve into the memory bank and pull out a few facts and opinions about the Salahis.

They have been upbraided by White House spokesmen. They’ve been vilified by solid conservatives concerned about the safety of the President. There have been calls for their arrest, or at least for heavy fines to be levied just to teach them a lesson and discourage future interlopers. Yet, they were the ones who were willing to provide their ‘documentation,’ and we know now that emails do constitute documentation, unless you don’t like what they say about the weather. The White House functionary responsible for the dinner, Desiree Rogers, has been told to keep her mouth shut. How interesting.

What we know is that they have something that might give them reason to believe they might be invited to the White House dinner, so who can blame them for trekking to the White House, just in case? They got there, and they were admitted. About all this, there doesn’t seem to be any disagreement.

So in their defense, I ask, how does that constitute ‘gate-crashing’ or ‘trespassing’? They didn’t climb over any fence (which would have been OK anyway, because it’s common knowledge that there is nothing wrong with climbing over a fence to get what you want, if you want it bad enough to climb over the fence). They didn’t overpower a Secret Service guard to burst into the ballroom. They didn’t even lie about it, as far as we know.

What they did was to talk to somebody and convince them they should be let in. That is neither trespassing nor gate-crashing. It’s called sweet-talking the gatekeeper. They should be HIRED by Obama, for gosh sakes. He NEEDS somebody who can talk someone else into something without having any proof or facts; he certainly doesn’t seem capable of doing that himself.